"...Kamen Rider?"
The weakened girl, Medea Lily, had confusion written all over her purple eyes.
This term was completely foreign to her, like everything about this era.
But the man before her, wearing that red insect-like helmet, didn't emit any malice that repulsed her. Instead, there was a kind of... strange gentleness.
She instinctively wanted to mobilize a trace of magical power to probe the true face beneath this strange helmet.
For a divine-age witch, even in her weakest state, such curiosity-driven investigation was not difficult.
However, the moment her magical power showed the slightest fluctuation, the man crouching before her seemed to sense something. His muffled voice sounded again, but this time his tone carried an unprecedented gravity and weight:
"I'd advise you not to do that."
Leo's voice, processed through the V3 helmet's voice modulator, sounded like a warning from an old radio. "Don't try to... see my face by any means."
Medea Lily's movements stopped.
She could sense that the other party wasn't joking.
"This helmet is a seal I've placed on myself."
Leo's voice lowered, as if recounting a forbidden secret. "Beneath the seal is a curse—one equivalent to a [highest-level charm curse] personally bestowed by Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty."
Aphrodite.
When that name emerged from beneath that strange helmet, Medea Lily's body trembled violently. Those already dimmed purple eyes suddenly contracted, a flash of disbelief crossing them.
That was a name etched into the depths of her soul, the source of one of her greatest tragedies.
Leo keenly caught this momentary change in her. He knew he'd gambled correctly.
He continued in that emotionless yet cutting voice: "Once you see my face, the curse will activate."
"You'll lose control of yourself. You'll abandon reason. You'll love someone you shouldn't love, just like you did with that 'hero' who took everything from you."
"You'll... the tragedy of your past life."
The last few words, Leo spoke slowly and clearly.
Like thunder striking the depths of Medea Lily's soul.
Repeat the tragedy...
That memory of being toyed with by gods, forced to give everything, only to be betrayed without mercy—it flooded back like a broken dam, instantly shattering her fragile defenses.
She remembered Eros's unreasonable golden arrow, Jason's false face, all the sins she'd committed for that forced "love"—betraying her homeland, killing her own brother.
A bone-chilling cold surged from the depths of her soul, even surpassing the chill of the rainy night.
She looked at the man before her in his ridiculous helmet. Her eyes transformed from initial wariness and confusion into pure terror and... a complex emotion of fellow suffering.
She believed his words. Because no one who knew her true name would use such cruel and precise methods to tear open her deepest wound.
Seeing her reaction, Leo knew the first step had succeeded.
He didn't give her too much time to dwell in the past. Instead, he chose to press his advantage and dropped the second bombshell.
He slowly stood up, towering above her, but his tone was no longer the feigned gentleness—it was a kind of frank candor.
"I knew you'd collapse here... I was deliberately waiting for you, Caster."
Medea Lily suddenly looked up, a flash of anger at being calculated appearing in her terrified eyes. "You..."
"That's right, I'm a Master, a participant seeking the Holy Grail."
Leo cut her off, openly admitting his intentions. "I know about the Holy Grail War. I know about Servant summoning. I also know that tonight, a divine-age witch will be summoned by a Master, then unilaterally abandoned. In retaliation, she'll betray and kill that Master, exhausting her magical power and collapsing weakly here."
His words were like a surgeon's scalpel, precisely dissecting Medea Lily's current situation.
Being seen through so clearly by a stranger made this former princess feel unprecedented humiliation and anger.
She bit her pale lips and looked coldly at Leo: "So what? Are you here to mock me? Or do you want to take advantage of my weakness and force me, this weakened Servant, to sign a contract with you?"
"No."
Leo shook his head. The V3 helmet's enormous red compound eyes flickered with mysterious light in the darkness.
"I'm not here to mock you, nor to force you."
"I'm here to... seek an ally."
He crouched down again, meeting her at eye level. That muffled voice carried a weight of shared understanding.
"The same?" Medea Lily scoffed, her tone filled with disbelief and mockery.
"Yes, the same."
Leo said with absolute certainty, "We are both... 'victims of Cupid's curse.'"
"You were forced by divine malice to love someone unworthy, sacrificed everything for it, and were ultimately abandoned like a worn-out shoe."
"And I," Leo pointed to his helmet, "was cursed by some unknown entity, forced to make every person of the opposite sex who sees my true face fall madly in love with me, desperately wanting to possess and imprison me... just like that young lady from the Tohsaka family."
He glossed over his experiences with Rin Tohsaka lightly, but the words "imprison" and "possess" caused Medea Lily's eyes to shift once more.
She stared at him in a daze.
One was forced to love.
One was forced to be loved.
Seemingly opposite, yet their essence was shockingly identical—both of their wills had been stripped away by a curse called "love," their bodies no longer their own, like puppets on strings.
She had committed sins because of this "love," while he had lost his freedom because of it.
So... there really was someone in this world as wretched as herself, toyed with by the gods in such a manner.
That anger born from being manipulated quietly dissipated in this moment, replaced instead by an indescribable resonance.
She no longer saw him as a Master with ulterior motives, but rather as a... "fellow sufferer" standing on the same side as herself.
"My wish is to make a contract with the Holy Grail and completely lift this damned curse from me... I want to regain my freedom, to live by my own will, not to become a collection of someone else's desires." Leo's tone was resolute, filled with longing for freedom.
"And you, Caster, don't you want the same?"
He gazed into her eyes and extended his final invitation, "Don't you want to break free from that manipulated fate and wash away the sins that don't belong to you?"
"Become my Servant, Medea."
"We are not master and slave, but allies bound by shared suffering."
"I need your unparalleled magical knowledge and power from the Age of Gods to clear the obstacles in my path to winning the Holy Grail. And I will repay you with the Holy Grail itself, granting you true salvation."
"Will you... accept?"
The rain continued to fall.
Leo extended his hand, and this time, his hand did not remain suspended in mid-air, but reached toward her with unwavering determination.
Medea Lily stared blankly at the palm hovering before her, then looked up at the helmet still bright red in the rain—ridiculous yet somehow reassuring.
Her heart, frozen by betrayal, seemed to crack open ever so slightly in this moment, pierced by words of such utter sincerity.